Spectacular changes in bank ranking

Six months were enough for the ranking of the top ten banks to see spectacular changes: BCR and BRD continued to grow, leaving the second tier far behind, the new bank about to emerge – HVB/Tiriac/ UniCredit is challenging the third position, ahead of Raiffeisen, ING climbs from 7 to 5, CEC falls again, Transilvania climbs one more place and ABN Amro drops six places to 10. As the banking system”s assets increased by 20% in euros between July and December, reaching 34.85 billion euros at the end of 2005, the banks that moved ahead in full swing saw results grow accordingly. The fiercest battle looks to be the clash between Raiffeisen and HVB/Tiriac/UniCredit, which are ahead of their competitors by three percentage points. Statistics on December 31, 2005 are not fully relevant, though, considering banks like Raiffeisen have come to sell or transfer some of their foreign currency loan business to their parent banks, to comply with the exposure cap set by the NBR last autumn. The six banks with 4-5% market shares are also fighting a fierce battle. The expansion of the retail market has given ING Bank a 0.4% increase in market share to 5.3%, with the net assets of the bank totalling 1.84 billion euros. The bank has retained its legal status as a subsidiary of the Dutch bank. Bancpost ranks sixth, having gained 0.3% more points, climbing two places to a 4.5% market share. Transilvania continued its march that began well over a year ago, gaining another 0.5% to 3.9%. ZF